Social media marketing: pros and cons

Social media has become the medium for people to socialise and for businesses to promote their brand. More and more are including social media marketing into their marketing strategy, but if you don’t already do so, it’s essential that you research and find out whether it’s beneficial for you and your brand before you jump in.

Here are some pros and cons of social media marketing to help you with your decision.

Pros:

Cheaper than other marketing tactics

This is one of the key advantages of social media marketing. More or less most of the time it’s free! To sign up for any social media network it doesn’t cost a penny and you get to interact with potential customers. This leaves you no excuse to leverage these platforms and use them to their full advantage.

However, if you really want to target specific audiences and gain targeted traffic, you can invest in paid social media advertising.

Better exposure

Another significant advantage is that the audience is a lot bigger. You have the chances of reaching all sorts of different audiences which could equate to millions of people in the long run. If you share valuable content, it can spread across audiences, from your existing to potential customers.

Provides insights

On any social media platform, you can view different types of audience insights. With the statistics provided, you can see who your content is reaching, which helps you to tailor it around that particular audience. If you check regularly, you can closely monitor your audience’s behaviour with your brand.

Interaction

Social media allows your audience to communicate with your brand directly on a more personal level. This means that you have the opportunity to talk to them creatively through different means. Whether that be through an interactive post, direct messages or even a live video, you can address issues and queries easily which works alongside customer service and can help the potential customer to gain trust in your business.

Cons:

Time-consuming

One of the biggest disadvantages of social media marketing is how time-consuming it can sometimes be. For an effective marketing effort, you need to be able to dedicate as much time as possible to work on your social profiles. You need to do continuous research to keep up to date with trends to make sure the content you’re posting is relevant with not only your brand but in general. Engaging with your audience takes time also.

ROI is harder to measure

Every business has a goal for their marketing; whether it be increasing traffic or brand awareness, organic social media marketing can take some time before you see any distinctive results and return on investments. It takes some time.

In conclusion, social media marketing is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing to date, and it’s always worth trying any marketing efforts for your business, but the main disadvantage is that it takes time. Don’t discount this form of marketing because of it, but consider it before going ahead with it. To reiterate, you need to do your research first.